Handy

Thierry Henry's little 'hand gesture' has certainly created a bit of a stir this week, resulting in debate on everything from video technology to the very ethics of the game and french people as a whole.

Of course, like everything with a faint whiff of scandal that's picked up by the media, it's been blown out of all proportion - witness the Daily Mail's front page story this week about oil tankers sitting in the English Channel waiting for petrol prices to rise before selling their cargo.

The whole point on both these fronts is that whilst what has been done was wrong, it was done by people, and people as a race are ultimately fallible, both in their desire to prosper and from the pressures they themselves are under.

The backlash on Henry has come from both sides of the Channel, but ask yourself this - what would the French have done to him if he'd admitted the handball and they'd gone on to lose? He'd have been equally lynched, or maybe even worse for not using sporting 'gamesmanship'.

I'm not saying for one minute that what he did was right. Just asking for a little wider perspective on why he did it and what has happened since.